The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

7:30 am

Dear Diary. It's Sunday. It's early morning. No one else is awake yet. I sit down at my laptop to do some work so I don't run out of money and end up homeless.

A minute later, 5-year-old wakes up with a cry of "Daddy!"

He wants to make homemade musical instruments using instructions from a 1980s Sesame Street book. Of course.

"Daddy, get some bottle tops and your belt."

"My belt? What do need my belt for?"

I look at the picture in the book. Bert from Sesame Street is holding a piece of card with bottle tops glued on and shaking it as a homemade maraca.

"I don't think that's a belt," I say. "It looks like a piece of card to me."

"Daddy, take off your belt."

"There's no way I'm taking off my belt so you can glue bottle tops to it. Look, let's use card instead."

"Okay, card," says 5-year-old.

So I get the card.

"Cut the card out Daddy."

I cut a strip of card. I don't think it's me who should be cutting the card but oh well. Then I glue some beer bottle tops onto the card using a glue gun. Hey presto: a homemade maraca. I'm strangely proud.

"Now get a tin, Daddy."

"A tin?"

"Yeah a tin."

I look in the book. Oscar the Grouch is banging a big metal tin with two wooden spoons. A big metal tin. You don't get big metal tins like that anymore. They used to have those in the 1980s. It reminds me of the tins of powdered milk for babies my mom used to buy. though I think even those tins were plastic.

"How about a can of tomatoes?" I say.

"Okay."

So I get a can of tomatoes from the kitchen cupboard and two wooden spoons.

"Now I need some piss in a cup," says 5-year-old.

"What?"

"I need some piss in a cup."

"Let me see that."

I take the book from him, expecting to see Big Bird crouching down and urinating into a plastic cup. Instead, there's a muppet I don't recognise (a blue one, but not the Cookie Monster) who has some peas in a cup. He's shaking the cup like a maraca.

So it's peas, not piss.

The only peas we have are frozen peas. Is that what Sesame Street want us to use? Frozen peas? I read the book. The book says we have to use "pasta or dry peas". What the hell? Dry peas? No one has dry peas anymore. Not since the Great Depression. I check the date of the book and bloody hell, it was published in 1985. This book is older than I am.

By the way, I'm only wearing a pair of boxer shorts and I'm sitting down and my willy is poking out the bottom of the boxer shorts.

Then I fart and the smell stinks the living room for a few seconds

I go get a cup of frozen peas. Then we make a guitar out of a box and elastic bands. Then we use two saucepan lids to make cymbals.

The last thing we make is a flute. I cut some holes out of a cardboard tube and cover one end of the tube using sellotape paper. Then I blow into the flute but it doesn't work. It's just the sound of me blowing. This is a shit flute. Just like all the other instruments.

But in the book, there's a picture of Ernie having a great time blowing his homemade flute. Maybe he's retarded.

11 am

I'm on my computer when I hear Girlfriend suddenly getting very excited.

"That's it! Yes, that's it!"

5-year-old's cheering. "He did it Mommy! He did it!"

This goes on for a while. I go to see what's going on.

"What's happened? Has he taken his first steps or something?

"Yeah! He's taken his first steps!"

"And what, you didn't think to tell me?"

"No, I didn't know what kind of mood you'd be in."

"Well, it was his first steps. Didn't you think I'd want to see that?"

"Oh."

Christ, I've just missed my son's first steps. And I was just sitting in the other room.

11:20 am

5-year-old and I are about to go out.

"Where are you going?" says Girlfriend.

"We're going out."

"You didn't tell me you were going out."

"Well you didn't tell me that my son was taken his first steps."

"Don't be like that. Anyway I'm supposed to be going out with 5-year-old. Not you."

Jesus Christ.

In the end we all go out togther. We have to wait ten minutes for Girlfriend to get ready. She's starting to really annoy me now. We are diametrically opposed like two electrons.